The Let the Baby Cry Trick

My 1 year old daughter Briani has what I call horror film lungs. When she shrieks, the walls and windows shake. My little girl is as determined and tenacious as her parents (she’s got a lot of my wife and me in her).

The thing about this little girl is that she’s the most stubborn sleeper I’ve ever met. My wife has a little cartoon monkey pajama for her that has a tiny motto tagged to it that reads “I’m not tired.” That’s Briani. If we let her (and we have done this many times because we fear hearing her shriek) she will stay up with my wife and I until well past midnight. Briani has also been spoiled about where she sleeps so on most nights she often stays in our bed. The biggest problem of all is that my wife hates it that the baby cries when she puts her to sleep in her own crib.

My son, who at 10 is the oldest, used to give me the same issue as a toddler until one of my friends told me what his wife and him did to solve the problem. They put the baby to bed in their crib in their room next door and they would walked away. Come hell or highwater nothing (except if the baby was sick) would rouse them. Two weeks later it was solved. Their baby knew that once he was put to bed they had the choice to cry all night for nothing or accept the circumstances. My ex-wife and I tried that with Jonathan and it worked like a charm.

Briani has been much harder to “break”. Like I said, she’s determined and tenacious to get her way, especially with her mom because moms almost always are willing to give in to the crying baby. We haven’t mastered Briani yet but the main victory I do have is that more times than not my wife will accept the “inhumanity” of letting a baby cry at the top of her lungs. Eventually the Let the Baby Cry Trick will work – it universally always does – but it’s up to my wife to let it happen.

Welcome to my world! I know what it means to have a kid that doesn’t want to sleep. There many theories about letting your son/daughter cry or simply admit that the Family Bed is the best scenario until the kids are ready to sleep in their own bed. My husband and I opted for the family bed for a while and all of us slept better as a result. I don’t believe letting your kids cry is the best solution. It causes a separation, distance from the parents and numerous studies suggest that kids who are sleep-trained at an early age don’t grow confident, self-assured or independent — totally contrary to what is the popular belief…so if Briani is happy with you guys…enjoy it! She will grow so fast that you will miss having her in your bed.

Lisa

We didn’t do the family bed, but we did snuggle our 2 1/2 year old son to sleep until he just got too big to be comfortable on our laps! Even now, we give him his “green blankie” and rub his back – at naptime he usually falls asleep after 10 minutes or so. At bedtime, he listens to his crib soother until he falls asleep. My husband usually puts him to bed, and he will lie down in our room next door “for 10 minutes” and B. was not going down for his naps, but it was extremely stressful, it didn’t work after 2 weeks like you read in the books, and it turns out that he was transitioning to a later naptime and more of a “big boy” schedule after all.

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